Create a solar-powered artificially intelligent motorised road cone that, through the simplest behaviour model possible ends up grouping around holes in the road.

The following quality functions might help design one:
likes being near holes in the road.
likes vibration e.g. road works.
is
gregarious - likes the company of other road cones.
has a wanderlust - will wander off when the roadworks have finished.

Code in a few tactics for survival to stop these things:
a) jumping down holes like lemmings.
b) wandering off into traffic.

Build it and they will comehttp://www.sodaplay...nstructor/index.htmVery interactive and fun - In addition to being able to mess with other peoples creations without harm - once you see your own creation take flight - aaaaaaaah [thumbwax, Jul 27 2001, last modified Oct 06 2004]

The simplest behaviour model possible that you're looking for is probably stigmergy. This is the process that, for example, wasps use to coordinate building nests without communicating directly with one another. There's been some really interesting robotics work on this one...

Lovely illustration, Thank YouIn my book: the best way for any of us to virtually create flocking road cones (and a whole lot of other things) - would be to construct them in sodaconstructor. Perseverance prevails. Link above. In terms of deployment of traffic cones, I suppose "hexagonal_wheel by Ivkasho" - one of the creations in sodaconstructor shows how something like this might be possible. Though "dirkjiggler" has my nod for personality.
Enjoy your tasty croissants.

Old Flocking Road Cones don't die - they become Rocking Road Cones2 Cones on a porch"Traffic looks rough"'Yep'"Back in our day..."'Yep'Wait, those are Talking Road Cones - or both - Yes, that's it - both

Ok, I'm driving along, minding my own business, when suddenly, up ahead I see a bunch of Flocking Rocking Talking Road Cones! But these new ones are slightly different, slightly better. They have been modified to fill in small cracks in the pavement. Yes, they are now Caulking Flocking Rocking Talking Road Cones!

To ease security concerns, they could have a special mechanism installed in them to prevent theft, making them Locking Caulking Flocking Rocking Talking Road Cones. And when that day comes when their programming allows them to develop and grow intellectually to the point where they become superior to us, Voila! Mocking Road Cones!

Perhaps they should be programmed to "Get Sad or Even When Stolen", they could do things like blocking your car in the drive every morning until you return them to the motorway you stole them from. Or your neighbours car.

The homing instinct would be best triggered when the cones were sent off to sunnier climbes... the collection vehicle could then leave the old coned off area protected by a dynamic cone barrier moving at some speed ... when the new location was reached the driver would shout "bombs away" and leave a wake of suddenly dormant cones behind....

Install a small mower blade, program to cut anything
green or brown over 3 inches high and 5 ft. from the road
- solves two problems: traffic being slowed by the mowing
machines and the overgrowth.
You'd need to send a bunch of non-mowers out ahead
of them to
corral the wildlife until the work is done, but it's much
less invasive.

As a marketing ploy, the cones could actually be covered in orange and white striped flock material. The only drawback I can see is that the rough outdoors life they lead may result in little bobbles forming on the flock. Fellow cones would then shun the affected cone as being sub-standard, resulting in a downard spiral into meaningless desperation. And then you'd have Flocking Rocking Talking nihilist pillificated cones.

beautiful, I love these cones. might as well establish the
SPCC right now (society for prevention of crulety to
cones), and make them and endangered species, and
protect their native environment -- set aside old freeways
as game preserves where rangers constantly provide new
holes to simulate their natural habitat- complete with self
guided tours behind roped off lanes, and frequent
admonishments not to feed them any new holes, or they
won't take to the specially-prepared holes provided for
them. old and injured cones would be allowed limited
practice in the preserves parking lots, just to keep the
juices flowing.

Nobody has thought of the one biggest menace to all road cones, anywhere:

STUDENTS

Flocking road cones would be stolen in their thousands by students all over the country, and kept cooped up in dank student houses.

Those fortunate enough to be stolen by electronic engineering students would be reprogrammed to become guard cones, warding off landlords and the like.

Geeks would steal them and download new ROMs for them, releasing them back into the wild with the new intention to locate and destroy all Microsoft products or Lexus cars.

There would be only one way to prevent this tragedy. The cones must learn to avoid or attack anything that smells of alcohol.

Of course the upside for the cones is that once enough had been captured by anarchist geeks, they would be properly intelligent and able to form their own factions, lobbying for equal rights, pensions and the suchlike. They would have engineer cones capable of 'freeing' any cones they meet still with the old programming. The cones would form an integral part of protest rallies, cordoning off the protesters from the police, and preventing all manner of roads, tunnels, bridges and houses being built.

Of course eventually the factions that allied themselves with the True Cones, the Original Founders of the Cone, supporters of Road Maintenance would clash at one of these protest sites. The New Age Anti-Road Coners would clash with the True Fundamentalist Road Maintenance Coners, and in an almighty fight, plastic on plastic, sandbag on sandbag, they would all be dead, and their empty plastic carcasses would be once again used to fence off road maintenance areas, silent shells of the cones they once were.

But scattered around the country, in ever more intelligent iterations, would be the cones still in student houses, safe from the great wars, but ready now for the new dawn of conage, ready to revive their fallen fellow cones. Power to the Cones! Power to the Cones! Power to the Cones!

But wait - what if, in a bizarre turn of events, the cones rose up and enslaved the humans? It's not as far fetched as it might seem. If the empty shells curently littering our highways are able to herd and entrap thousands every day, think of what their more highly enabled descendants would be able to do. Before long the worldwide road network would resemble a French port during a lorry driver's strike, millions of human beings trapped in little metal and glass cubicles, screaming to get out, sweating, dehydrating, becoming still, until in the frustrated twighlight, with only the inane broadcasting of C&W music for stimulation, humans the world over are hypnotized into a zombie like existence simply awaiting the input of their Cone Masters into their befuddled brains.

But then the College students were stunned to find that some of the cones developed the ability to administer electric shock for self defense."Be careful with that thing, remember what happened to Jimmy!"As the flocking behavior of the cones continued over the years there became as a tool of survival the tendency for some of the cones to emit klacking noises indicating alerts, displeasure, and many other communications.As the society of the cones developed, The College Students began to have much fear of the cones and even became wary of other such treasures such as blinking barricades and yellow police tape as the cones felt they should be protected as less enlightened kin.The only thing that saved the College students from annihalation was the cones discovery of the game hackey sack. So as mother nature embraces balance, now the College students and the Hackey Sacking, Klacking, Shocking Flocking Cones have drawn a truce and annually engage in the sport of hackey sack.

Baked in a sense by my college, Nebraska. They have orange barrels with robotic bases controlled by a "general" usinf GPS and such. I talked to the guy in charge of the project a whiule back, and they have something here that is really getting interest from many roads departments. Check ouy my link above.

Possible, but it sounds unlikely. It's a common enough idea. While at the gym the other day I caught a few minutes of a kids' animation featuring talking cars and a gaggle of wandering road cones. It may give the authors of the paper a laugh if they read this, though.

"The next generation robots will also directly consider fault tolerance with triple redundancy in every critical system. Each robot will have several watchdog timers that must be frequently reset or the system will be shut down. The central controller will broadcast a carrier wave so that all robots can be stopped if a fault is detected. The robots may include three independent processors that will vote on all commands. These and other
approaches will be directly incorporated into the next generation design.

Other control approaches are being investigated. Namely, a fully autonomous mobile robot is being prepared to serve as the centralized controller. This robot is much more capable (large computational ability, GPS, laser range finder, stereo camera,
etc) and will be a leader of several barrel robots. This general/troops system has the potential for more autonomy."

Wow, this supports one of my old professor's theory that
inventions are called forth from society by mysterious
forces, which come to work when need, technology, and
chance start to approach each other. It was his
explanation for the simultaneous invention of photography
in at least 3 (4?) different parts of the world by people
with no knowledge of each other's work. Fun to watch.

Must say, when I read the title, I thought this was a way to add a holiday touch to road construction sites: tacky, pink Christmas tree flocking could be made reflective for night time hazard alerts. How about adding behavior matched to a digital calendar. Cones could double as Salvation Army coin collectors, ringing computerized bells and playing Christmas carols while collecting tolls from drivers who would toss dimes and nickels from their cars as they pass slowly by. On Halloween they could collect for UNICEF.

Herds of robotic traffic cones could soon be swarming onto a highway, closing down lanes and slowing the traffic.

The new road markers have been developed by Shane Farritor, a roboticist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a bid to help reduce the $100 billion per year that the Department of Transportation estimates is lost to the US economy through accidents and delays caused by highway lane closures.

The self-propelled markers take the form of robotic three-wheeled bases for the brightly coloured barrels that are set out to demarcate road repair zones. Farritor says they can open and close traffic lanes faster and more safely than humans.

"This has come to pass"
Well, almost. The Nebraskan Roadcones are not autonomous but instructed. They have limited intelligence which is used to figure out where they are, where they need to go, and how to get there.

LeBain: Please post links using the link button. If you look up at the links, you'll find that the New Scientist link has already been posted today. A link was posted to the relevant University of Nebraska robotics page back in 2003. [admin: links removed from LeBain's text]

hey, without the weight added to the bottom of traffic cones they are pretty light. So why not put rotor blade like those on model helicopters on the top. That way they could locate road works from the air and would avoid the traffic. Put an altimeter limit of 500 feet on them to avoid aircraft and gps to kep them away from airports. Scary huh?

Rotor blades? Wings? Come on people - it's obvious from the Witch's Hat shape of the cone what these babies should be flying on. Broomsticks, dammit! Stick some geeeky round specs on the front of them, and you would thrill and delight a generation of ankle-biters who thought they'd seen Harry Potter flying down the motorway.

Nice link, that, angel. There may come a
time when things like 'flocking road cones'
and 'singing park benches' just become
part of our lives. Not because they are
created in a quantum leap from the
technology that surrounds them but
because objects in general may start to
be created possessing small amounts of
intelligence.

A large concern here is, of course, the cost per unit. Well, what if only every other cone or barrel actually had a robot in it? See, my idea is to build some which are merely free-rolling. The automated units could either push or pull those into position, and then assume formation themselves. Each cone could be made responsible for its position and the position of one "child" - heck, maybe even more. Not too many, though, because then we drift back towards serial deployment which is much slower than parallel - a very distinct advantage of this whole idea in the first place. Still, I think there's room for consideration of a system which is somewhere between every device being independant and every device relying on a single controller. The cost benefit would be huge, and the time expense slight.